It’s the peculiar fate of rock musicians that they can pursue long creative careers forever shadowed by the things they did when they were kids.
Ed Kuepper, who turns 70 in December, is about to resume an international tour with a version of The Saints, a band he co-founded in 1973 when he was 17, and left in 1978. And, although he’s gone on to make more than 20 albums in his own right, he doesn’t mind that.
The Saints, to be clear, were not just any band. They formed in suburban Brisbane, outsider kids far from any sphere of influence, and unexpectedly found themselves hailed as progenitors of punk rock’s cultural explosion half a world away in Britain, after hopefully mailing copies of their 1976 debut single (I’m) Stranded – which they’d recorded, pressed and released on their own – to anyone they could think of. That single predated recordings by The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned.
The Ramones, who had formed in 1974 with similar influences, beat them to record by a few months. But while The Ramones pretty much sounded like The Ramones from beginning to end, The Saints expanded over three albums in two years – (I’m) Stranded, Eternally Yours and Prehistoric Sounds – to make music that harnessed their love of soul and R&B into something that was both new and quite out of step with punk rock fashion.
The records, driven by Kuepper’s exciting guitar sound and his schoolmate Chris Bailey’s vocals, have endured in a way that much of the era’s music has not. They still sound magnificent.
Kuepper left the band over differences with Bailey, who carried on touring and recording as The Saints almost until he died in 2022 (a final album, Long March Through The Jazz Age, is set for posthumous release in November). That’s why, officially, Kuepper’s band is The Saints ’73-78’, a name Bailey agreed to Kuepper using some years ago as a focus for fans. Kuepper has been playing songs the pair wrote together all along.
“The early stuff, it’s always been part of what I did,” he says. “I never at any stage washed my hands and said that is something that I’m never going to touch again because I don’t like it.”
He has just released a new version of Swing for the Crime from Prehistoric Sounds, with former Dirty Three drummer Jim White. He’s somewhat surprised to be told it’s the third time he’s recorded it (the second was on 2014’s The Return of the Mail-Order Bridegroom), which is perhaps a peril of being so prolific.
Last year, to prepare for the new venture Kuepper went back to the old records.
“I sort of immersed myself in those records for a couple of days, just put them on in the background and remembered how I used to play them. I mean, I had the basic idea, but I was surprised at the intensity of it. You know, to actually get that sound is a very physical kind of engagement.”
All reports since suggest the band, with Mark Arm of American band Mudhoney on vocals, original member Ivor Hay on drums, former Birthday Party and Bad Seeds member Mick Harvey on guitar and Peter Oxley on bass – plus, crucially, a touring horn section – is doing justice to the music. Kuepper admits to some surprise at the enthusiastic reception that has greeted them.
“That was great, and it was a surprise. And it really gave the shows a sort of a special sort of celebratory kind of atmosphere, I think.”
A flawed documentary about the band produced in 2015 for the ABC was less about the music than the environment it came from – Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland, which was not a good place in which to be young and free. The Saints song Brisbane (Security City) speaks of an anger about the place.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a mindless anger though. There’s actually something a bit reflective about those records, even though they’re quite energetic. It was a relatively repressive environment, but at the same time it was countered by the fact that it wasn’t that populated – you’re a bit fleet-footed and you can get away from the cops.”
Having grown up in what was the closest this part of the world has got to an authoritarian state, what does he make of the way the world is lurching now?
There’s going to be a three-storey tower of me in a long overcoat pointing towards the eastern sun with a guitar in my other hand, just sort of holding it casually. It’ll be fairly noble. A major tourist attraction, I’m sure.
“It’s pretty dark. But once you start looking into things, it actually has always been pretty dark. I think what’s happening at the moment is that suddenly a lot of this stuff is kind of exposed, in a way that took longer back then. Where things are fucking going at the moment, Jesus, I don’t know. Don’t ask me that before I’m about to tour!”
Over the years, Queensland has come to embrace its outsider sons. Kuepper and his wife moved back there years ago and in 2017, the city council renamed a reserve in his honour, near where he grew up in the suburb of Oxley.
Ed Kuepper Park is, he deadpans, “magnificent. There’s going to be a three-storey tower of me in a long overcoat pointing towards the eastern sun with a guitar in my other hand, just sort of holding it casually. It’ll be fairly noble. A major tourist attraction, I’m sure.”
Both he and Bailey were immigrant kids – Kuepper was born in Germany and Bailey was born in Kenya and spent his early childhood in Northern Ireland. It seems to echo the story of AC/DC and The Easybeats, one of migrant vigour shaping Aussie rock.
“I guess it did make a substantial impact on me as a kid, coming to a new country. I couldn’t speak English when I started school. I’ve also been asked, would the band have sounded the same if we hadn’t grown up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane? I don’t know. I know that I just connected with wanting to play music from such a young age.”
At any rate, more than one contemporary has described Kuepper’s work ethic as “Teutonic”. Between shows with White and the resumption of Saints dates, he has completed a new album with Asteroid Ekosystem, his collaboration with jazz keyboardist Alister Spence. After NZ, The Saints play a string of dates in the US and UK and he has more shows with White. Kuepper’s not the fitness type (he alternates between a vape and a roll-your-own throughout the interview), but he clearly likes to stay busy.
“I’m not so sure! Sometimes I’m quite happy with not doing things. But yeah, it’s good to be working.”
What makes him happy?
“Oh, look, I have two beautiful granddaughters, I had two beautiful dogs – I only have one now, the other one died last week. My family, music still, all the sweet things, it’s all important. I have a fairly come-what-may kind of approach to the way that what I do artistically is received, like it doesn’t matter to me. Less now than it ever did. And I think it’s a really good way to be.”
Does he feel any less of an outsider now?
“No,” he says. “No, not really.”
The Saints ’73-’78, The Powerstation Auckland, Friday, October 31; MeowNui, Wellington, Saturday, November 1.